Angela Davis documentary, produced by Will Smith, Jada Smith and Jay-Z, brings life of revolutionary to big screen

Activist Angela Davis speaks onstage at the 'Free Angela & All Political Prisoners' Press Conference during the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival at TIFF Bell Lightbox on September 10, 2012 in Toronto, Canada. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images)

From Ebony.com: Free Angela and All Political Prisoners, a new film by Shola Lynch, in which Angela Davis, 68, speaks openly for the first time in forty years about the tumultuous events of her twenties, debuted at this week’s Toronto International Film Festival. Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith, who introduced the doc at the festival, just announced that their Overbrook Entertainment have partnered with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation as executive producers of the documentary about the scholar who came to embody Black power and Black radical feminism.

It’s a wonder that Davis’s trial hasn’t been brought to the big screen before. Two months after the 26-year old was fired from her assistant professorship at UCLA because of her affiliation with the Communist Party and her vocal support for three California inmates known as “the Soledad Brothers,” the State accused her of being involved in a plot to help famed Soledad Brother George Jackson, a Black Panther and communist intellectual break out San Quentin prison.

On August 7, 1970,George Jackson’s brother and Angela’s personal bodyguard, 17-year-old Jonathan Jackson initiated the kidnapping of a superior court judge, assistant district attorney and three jurors in open court in San Rafael, California. He demanded the release of George and the other Soledad Brothers. Jonathan provided arms to three convicts, who assisted him in the takeover. The resulting shootout left Jonathan, two of his accomplices and the judge dead, and the assistant district attorney badly wounded. Angela Davis had purchased used in the shooting. When she hears she is wanted by police, she leaves the state traveling in wigs to disguise her iconic afro. She goes from Los Angeles to Chicago to Miami –––the FBI finally tracked down and arrested her on October 13, 1970 at a Howard Johnson’s in New York City.

Free Angela is Shola Lynch’s second film. She won a Peabody Award in 2006 for her documentary Chisholm ’72: Unbought And Unbossed, which chronicled Shirley Chisolm’s historic 1972 run for the White House. EBONY spoke with Lynch about her newest project.

EBONY: There’s something about Angela Davis that makes her able to connect with people. She’s so educated. She’s so articulate. Do you think her extensive education played a big part in the drama of her criminal trial in 1971, which is portrayed in your film?

LYNCH: I don’t think it was just her education…What does somebody do when faced with enormous pressure from power? How do you respond to that? And her choices are clear and they’re documented. And I think what’s difficult about her is she doesn’t apologize for her choices. And she appears to be so strong. And in 1970, there just were not that many women, let alone women of color, who projected that persona in the world.